He plasma. That is the origin of everything and its lack of supply is the cause of the complex evolution of the Catalan firm Grifols in recent years. The year 2021 began and when it came to designing the company’s strategic plan Grifols He confirmed that the business model he was involved in was facing development difficulties. The shareholders’ meeting was the starting signal from a public sphere point of view for a new stage based on growth and the search for business volume. Regardless of whether the report released this Tuesday by the opportunistic Gotham, the truth is that from that commitment to diversification the movements in the purest ‘Succession’ style were derived. Grifols conspired in 2021 to boost its commitment to research as a way to avoid the growth problems that were causing the pharmaceutical company. the limitations of collecting blood plasma on an international scale. For Grifols, human plasma is its raw material for the development of so-called blood derivatives, those pharmaceutical specialties whose active ingredient comes from the plasma of healthy human donors through an appropriate fractionation and purification process.
In that 2021, the then co-CEO of the firm Victor Grifols officially announced that the firm was going to “open the focus and bet on non-plasma products through a greater commitment to research: “We want to evolve in a new paradigm in blood products so as not to depend on the US,” he explained, since the firm had shown in In fiscal 2020, 50% of the growth had come from new products.
At that time, the great instruments for this growth were the firms Chiron, Alkahest and Gigagen and the greater internationalization of the business (especially China, Egypt and the United States). After years, the bet relatively failed.
Blood products are vital, never better said, in various medical fields, such as immunology, hepatology and intensive care, neurology, hematology and pulmonology. Plasma drugs are also relevant for the treatment of ophthalmological diseases. Grifols dreamed of vertically controlling the entire pharmacological creation process from its specialty with plasma. Albert Grifols Coma-Cros had to have a relevant role in the new projects. The family evolution of the group and the entry of new generations into positions of responsibility were already palpable.
Grifols openly recognized that the commitment to the US, Egypt and China had the fundamental objective of increasing the recruitment of plasma donors, but they already detected difficulties in maintaining the growth of recent years if new ways were not found to address the future.
Related news
Grifols at some point proposed legal mechanisms that would allow it to purchase blood in a less regulated manner in order to carry out its activity, as in the US. The lower donations made due to the pandemic triggered an alarm signal that wanted to be compensated with international purchases and debt. “If there is no plasma, many lives will be lost due to lack of raw materials for the production of medicines,” Grifols warned.
The Bioscience division lost weight. On the other hand, the Diagnostic division, dedicated to the manufacture and development of devices, instrumentation and reagents for transfusion medicine, such as blood type tests or compatibility tests between donor and patient prior to a transfusion, tended to grow. Stock market analysts have continued to trust Grifols in recent years. Despite this, they now recognize some signs. The continued purchase of companies with bank resources and the subsequent wave of stake sales is a sign that the company has been managed in a questionable manner. Despite these leveraged buyouts, their margin or profit tended to shrink over the years. An independent audit must now confirm or deny whether the diversification strategy was correct or simply a poorly controlled exit to address growth.